Current digital TV broadcasts employ MPEG transport streams. MPEG transport streams are projected to be utilized as a standard in the field of video digital broadcast. In such digital broadcasts, the contents (e.g., video information) to be broadcasted are time-divided into groups of data each having a predetermined size (e.g., 188 bytes) called transport packets, and broadcast data is sent in units of transport packets.
As a streamer for recording digital broadcast data, a home digital VCR such as D-VHS (digital VHS), or the like, is commercially available. A streamer using D-VHS records a broadcasted bitstream on a tape. For this reason, a plurality of programs can be multiplexed and recorded on a video tape.
Upon playback, all data are output from the VCR to a set-top box (digital TV reception apparatus) when they are played back from the beginning or middle of the tape. In the set-top box, a desired program is selected from the output data by user operation of the like. The selected program information is transferred from the set-top box to a digital TV receiver, and is played back (playback of video, audio, and the like). Because the D-VHS streamer uses a tape as a recording medium, it cannot attain quick random access, and it is difficult to quickly jump to a desired position of a required program so as to play it back.
In digital TV, video data is broadcasted while its information is compressed using a digital compression scheme known as MPEG-2. In MPEG-2, P-picture information has only differential information from I-picture, and B-picture information has only differential information from I-and P-pictures. Therefore, B- or P-picture cannot be solely played back, and playback from I-picture is required to playback these pictures. Note that video playback time viewed from the user, which is indicated by display times of I-, B-, and P-pictures, is different from the time stamp information. For this reason, when time management for stream data recorded on the information storage medium is made using time stamp data, control of the display time (video playback time) for the user cannot be accurately made.